The Fort
by AliceAo
Summary: John comes home from work early to find Sherlock has built a cushion fort. super cute. fluff and more fluff... and a first kiss :D


John Watson cracked his spine as he rose from his thick leather office chair. It had been a long time since John had ever taken a day off, being the Good Samaritan he always is, he would rather put up with the full day instead of unloading his workload to someone else.

But today he was tired of working, tired of the sore throats and hideous rashes. Today he was going to pull a sicky.

He walked out of the bathroom and held his stomach. Sarah raced over to him and placed a gentle hand on the flat of his back.

"John. Are you feeling alright?" Sarah asked with genuine concern in her words.

"Yeah. Ahem. Yeah I'm just a bit woozy." John scrunched his face into deep ridges and bent over, leaning against the wall for support.

"You are in no fit state to see anyone today. Go home and get to bed. Let me know if you're still under the weather tomorrow, okay?" She smiled brightly and rubbed small circles into John's back.

"Alright. Thanks, Sarah. I don't think anyone would come back if they saw me throwing up into a bin." John chuckled, trying to maintain the act and finding himself getting carried away with the dramatics.

_I should have been an actor. _

Once he gathered his belongings and walked out of the clinic, a new lease of life came over him and he felt like clicking his heels together with glee.

Not even the herds of passengers on the tube with ridiculously horrid BO and obnoxiously loud children could put a dampener on John's mood. He looked to his watch.

1:24pm.

He inhaled deeply and sighed as he entered into through the door of 221b Baker st.

_Home, _He chuckled to himself and shuck his head. _What a place to call home._

He climbed the stair lazily and pushed through the door to the kitchen. The place was relatively tidy, save the odd bowl or frying pan. John picked up a test tube from its wooden frame. The liquid was pink in colour and smelled of… John inhaled the scent… bubble gum? John picked up all four tube and brought them to his nose. Sickly sweet strawberry, super sour apple, bubblicious blueberry and, aloe vera?

_What a strange experiment Sherlock is conducting_, John thought to himself, rubbing the spill-over of the liquids between his fingertips and inhaling their scent. It reminded him so much of summer evenings of his youth, running around the garden with Harry. John sighed loudly and walked towards the living room, looking forward to some cheap daytime TV.

When John turned the corner, his eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped.

He had seen Sherlock doing many things before on the couch. Drawing, dissecting, dismembering. But what he witnessed before him at this moment stirred something inside him that John had forgotten he had locked away.

Sherlock Holmes sat on the floor, cocooned in a thick blanket beneath a large fort made of chair cushions.

The human sausage roll peered from beneath the blanket and pouted.

"You're home early." before smiling childishly. His mop of black curls lay in an untameable mass on the top of his head and stuck out in gravity-defying directions.

John walked sheepishly towards the bundle of sweetness for fear that he would wake up from this wonderfully unrealistic dream.

He pinched his arm and winced as a sharp pang of pain shot through his nerves.

"I'm not dreaming." John spoke out loud to himself rather than to anyone in particular.

"Of course you are not, otherwise this would have been a waste of a perfectly good day" Sherlock scowled and curled the thick blanket around his face, squishing his thick cheeks into perfectly plump marshmallows.

John tried to contain his laughter but failed miserably. Sherlock frowned and began to shift away from the giggling man.

"Awwwww, no. Don't be like that. I'm sorry. Honestly." John made a sign of a cross over his heart and walked towards the mound of cushions.

"Can I join you?" John asked, looking into the black pit. The fortress was more structurally fortified and solid than many buildings in the greater London area. A hurricane couldn't tear down the miniature house Sherlock had built in the short houses between waking and John's return.

"This is a pyjama party. You have to be wearing pyjamas to come inside." Sherlock spoke diplomatically with all the assurance of a ruling emperor.

John chuckled but complied. This was too entertaining to miss.

10 minutes later, John returned to the sitting room clad in his usual night attire, striped full length blue and white trousers and a matching top with buttoned sleeves. Sherlock smiled on seeing his fully pyjamaed flatmate.

"Now can I come in?" John sighed, a small curl in his upper lip.

"Will you throw on some popcorn? Please?" The small childish plead in his flatmates voice melted a small frozen volt in John's heart called 'childhood memories'. He puffed air out of his lungs and it rasped between his lips.

10 minutes later, John Watson stood once again at the foot of the fort.

"Can I please come in?"

Sherlock's eyes grew wide with delight as he spotted the large pot of popcorn in John's hands.

"Of course." Sherlock smile, scooting over in his marshmallow-like form. "-but while you are up would you please pass me the remote for the Netflix. I can't seem to find it anywhere."

John lowered the popcorn to the floor and reached for the television and the tiny silver Netflix remote.

John dragged the blanket he had brought himself from his bedroom wardrobe and wrapped himself like Sherlock. Together they sat like two cosy pastries in an oven.

After aimlessly flicking through some action and adventure movies, coming up with nothing that excited either flatmate enough to endure the whole thing, Sherlock turned to John and spoke just above a whisper.

"What would you like to watch?"

John looked to the tiny silver remote Sherlock protruded through a tiny hole in his blanket cocoon.

"I am thinking something… funny."

"And happy?"

"Yes it can be happy."

"What level of cheese are we considering?"

John looked directly into Sherlock's wide eyes.

"Definitely a lactose intolerants idea of hell." He smiled and Sherlock smiled a wide toothy grin.

After scrolling through the list, both Sherlock and John gasped as one movie above all stood out as a class of chees above the rest.

In unison they spoke.

"The Princess Diaries."

They turned with wide playful grins stitched into their faces.

"Hell. Yes." Sherlock pressed the play button and curled into a ball, scooting himself under John's arm. John looked down at the man before him and a lightness came over him.

After several minutes of interrupted silence, John awkwardly tried to reposition himself without disturbing the relaxed form of the grown 5 year old in his lap.

Sherlock sat upright and cocked his head to the side. "Is everything ok?"

John had never Sherlock look so innocent of childish before.

"Yeah everything's fine. It's just my leg, you know."

Within 30 seconds, Sherlock had commandeered a small cushion from somewhere in the black lagoon of the back of the fort, and had propped John's bad leg onto the cushion.

The pressure released from the nerve that had been pinched in the prolonged sitting and John sighed in relief.

"Better?" Sherlock smiled widely.

"Much better, thank you Sherlock. This is all so… lovely and heart-warming. What gave you the idea?"

Sherlock shuffled in his place and mumbled something under his breath.

"I can't hear you." John drew closer to Sherlock.

In one move, Sherlock captured John's lips in his own and held them for 3…4…5…6 seconds before letting the stunned man drop back into his own position.

"It was some website that was missing some of its letters. Tuber? Timer? Tamer…" Sherlock continued to ramble while John sat in shock.

He looked to Sherlock, half expecting man to evaporate into wisps of smoke a mirrors. But he didn't. He sat perfectly steady and continued to figure out his own solution.

"parkr? Papr? Muffin makr?" Sherlock continued.

"Tumblr" John finally responded, readjusting to the blinding light of reality once more.

"Tumblr! That's it." Sherlock shrieked with delight.

John chuckled and climbed closer to the 6 ft. manchild, wrapping his arms around his muscular yet lean frame.

"What did Tumblr tell you to do, Sherlock" John leaned in and brushed his lips against Sherlock's lower jaw.

"Well it told me lots of things. But I saw one post in particular. It read along the lines off 'I'm tired of being a grown up. If you need me you'll find me in my cushion fort. Colouring."

John laughed heartily at the statement and Sherlock joined in. Together they sat laughing until tears ran down their cheeks.

"And did you get a colouring book and crayons?" John chuckled, wiping a tear from his cheek from sheer bewilderment.

"No but I did get different scented bubble baths, which may substitute nicely, if you care to see."

A slimmer of something more appeared in Sherlock's eye and John's lip twitched despite his best efforts to conceal his reaction.

"You can draw a bath after the movie." John smirked and turned back to the screen, pulled the taller man down onto his lap and began stroking his mess of curls.

"But there is a second Princess Diaries movie about Mia getting married." Sherlock turned his 'dork' up to 10 and John began another fit of giggling.

"Don't we have all evening?" he reassured Sherlock with a tender pat to the arm.

"And tomorrow?"

John thought about this for a moment.

"We'll see how tonight's bath goes." He winked at the man in his lap and they both finished watching the movie.

Needless to say, John called in sick the next morning.

The end.


End file.
